Being a small business executive can be at once isolating and overwhelming.

They have bills to pay, phone calls to make, papers to sign, employees to instruct. And they're often doing it alone.

“As entrepreneurs running small businesses, we try to wear too many hats and tend to remain rather isolated in our offices,” said Catherine M. Phillips, co-owner of Phillips Precision Inc., a machine shop in Boylston.

Sometimes, what a CEO needs is a friend, someone who understands the challenges of running a small business in challenging economic times.

“Everybody has the same problem: Growth, and how do I make myself more profitable, or profitable in general,” said Thomas R. Sioui, chief executive officer of Slideways Inc. in Worcester, a firm that makes customized plastic parts for packaging machinery.

This came to light for Mr. Sioui in 2007 when he became one of the first local CEOs to pursue the StreetWise MBA, a nine-month course taught by the Boston-based nonprofit organization Interise. The goal of the course is to help small businesses in low-income communities, including Worcester, to grow. The way Interise sees it, one way for small businesses to succeed is for executives to make friends.

Manassah E. Bradley, an Interise instructor who has taught the program in Worcester, said a big part of his role is to facilitate dialogue among his students to help them build lasting relationships.

“It's as important as the instruction they get in the class. It's a very powerful aspect of the class,” he said.

Classes include executives from various industries, from manufacturing to auto repair to professional services. The businesses range in size from those that make $300,000 a year to those that earn as much as $10 million.

The diversity of the classes helps executives think about their businesses in new ways, Mr. Bradley explained.

“Learning how a different industry does things, it allows you to sort of cross-pollinate,” he said. “By looking at how other CEOs are satisfying their customers, you can take their best practices and incorporate them into your business.”

All the local business owners interviewed for this story said they were still in touch with at least some of their Interise classmates. Some are personal friends. Some have built business relationships.

“We have shared resources and have done work for one another,” Mrs. Phillips, of the Boylston machine shop, wrote by email.

Michele Sloan, owner of W.J. Hoey Tire Co. in Worcester, who finished the Interise program in July, said she bonded with a classmate, the head of a recycling company, over the fact that he was a minority business owner and she is a woman business owner.

“We're a little family now,” she said of her class. “We all have the same issues.”

Small businesses, which the U.S. Small Business Administration defines as having fewer than 500 employees, represent 98 percent of Massachusetts employers. They employ 47 percent of the state's private-sector workforce.

Interise contends that established small businesses — not just startups — play a crucial role in job creation. The nonprofit boasts that graduates of its crash-course MBA program created jobs at a rate of 14 percent last year, far above the 2 percent growth seen in the private sector overall.

Interise has worked with nearly 1,800 businesses nationwide. In Central Massachusetts, 39 businesses have completed the course since it launched in Worcester in 2007.

Businesses that take the course must develop three-year strategic growth plans. They do this after a lot of introspection.

“They do a lot of analysis of their business,” Interise CEO Jean Horstman said. “It's something a consultant could do ... but doing it themselves, they learn a lot about the business.”

The course forces executives to work less in their business and more on their business — looking at the big picture instead of getting bogged down in the day-to-day.

“That forced me to take a step back twice a month and get away from the office,” said Peter Gardner, CEO of Westboro-based Curry Printing, a commercial printer with 30 employees.

Mr. Gardner took the Interise course before the recession. When the downturn started he had to change his growth plan to a survival plan. But he still made an investment in the company by buying new printing equipment. He's expecting revenues of $4 million this year, up 6 percent from 2011.

Other business operators made other changes after taking the course.

“The biggest thing I learned is to take a financial risk, because the stage the business was in it needed the money to grow,” said David R. Comeau, CEO and founder of Albright Technologies Inc. in Leominster.

Albright Technologies, which employs 20 people and makes prototypes of silicone products for medical device manufacturers, decided to move to a new building. The company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to move and to upgrade the facility by building a clean room.

“Since we moved our revenue has grown 50 percent,” said Mr. Comeau, who's expecting more than $2 million in revenue this year. “We've doubled the number of employees.”

Ms. Sloan, the owner of the tire and auto repair shop, decided to spend more than $30,000 on an alignment machine and lift. The investment means she can offer customers a new service.

After the Interise course, she also decided to hire three new part-timers, bringing her headcount to eight, which means senior employees can spend less time on routine repairs and more time on other tasks.

For Mr. Sioui, the CEO of Slideways, the class helped him realize the importance of sales. His company, which makes plastic parts for conveyer systems that package soup into cans and pills into bottles, previously had about 1,000 customers. He decided to go after more. He hired a full-time sales manager, who helped bring 792 new customers to the business in less than five years.

Slideways suffered during the recession. Business came to a standstill in November 2008, and the company laid off 10 of its 25 employees. But Mr. Sioui contends the business was better prepared for the downturn because of changes he made after the Interise program.

“You can't do the same things you've been doing and get somewhere new,” he said.

Slideways has 20 employees today, and sales have been growing since 2010.